Irish History: Brendan the Navigator & Newgrange

I'm reading a book called 'Ireland' by Frank Delaney. It's a novel, made up of lots of stories about the history and legends of Ireland. I'm only about a quarter of the way through the book, and there has been several stories so far including:

Brendan the Navigator - the story of an Irish monk who was also a sailor. He sailed around various the coast of Ireland, Scotland, England and to France. Then one day he set off with a group of monks to sail across the Atlantic. He visited several islands, spent 7 years travelling around the islands. He eventually visited the 'promised land', which the story names as America, where he meets natives with feather head-dresses. I've looked up Brendan on Wikipedia. He became a Saint, and the legend is based on several historic sources. One theory is that the promised land he visited was America, though this has never been proved. I found it fascinating though, particularly with my interest in early American history. Visit the wikipedia article for Brendan the Navigator

The building of Newgrange. This is a prehistoric temple, a sort of Irish stonehenge. I'd never heard of it before, but it sounds like it is quite famous. It is a 'passage tomb' and is older than both Stonehenge and the Grea Pyramid at Giza in Egypt! It was buried for over 4,000 years but uncovered in the 17th century by some men digging for Stone. Every year at the winter solstice, the sun shines for 17 minutes into a central chamber - this was obviously designed to be so.
Wikipedia article for Newgrange.